Thoughts Above and Below
by Kansas42
Summary: FINALLY completed! Written before season 4 started. Everyone's on the roof by themselves, thinking, but one CSI's thoughts don't come from above: they come from below.
1. Sara

Chapter 1  
  
She stood on top of the roof and looked down at the ground beneath her. The breeze was cold but she barely felt it. It wasn't a normal feeling for her. She was always all passion, all fire and force under a stern face and angry eyes. But since the explosion, she felt not fire or ice. . .just numb. She felt the urge to pinch herself or cut herself or anything to make sure she was really there and that she wasn't about to wake up from some sort of abstracted nightmare that had become her life. She closed her eyes and opened them again. She could still see the ground several feet below her. She was still standing on the roof, looking down, and wondering if she had always, in some sense, been standing apart from others. Maybe she had always been on this roof.  
She didn't mind not really understanding people. It didn't bother her that she stood apart from the crowd, but to stand alone entirely was a different matter. And it seemed to her now as she watched the people below her that she had been alone and a hand had reached towards her and she had grasped it for a moment. In that moment, she had known what touch and warmth felt like, and when the contact had faded away, she couldn't go back to standing alone again. There had been something there, in that connection in an otherwise lonely world. She had touched that hand. She wanted to hold it again. She wanted it to come with a body and a mind and an enigmatic personality and a voice that said, "All right. Let's go get dinner."  
There had been something between her and Grissom, she knew it, but it had just faded away. No, he had just faded away. She couldn't remember when it happened exactly. It wasn't an instant chemistry thing. Initially, she was the student and he was the teacher, and that was all fine, all gravy, Greg might say. But then they had become closer and she knew she hadn't imagined it or been the only one to feel it. He had felt it too. But he faded away, and she couldn't get him back. It was hard to be in love with a ghost.  
Maybe love was too strong. She didn't know she could say that she loved Grissom. But there was something, and maybe he was too blind to see it. He was always the numb one, the dispassionate. Maybe a mix like that would never have worked. She was too passionate and he was too chilled. Maybe it would never have worked.  
But she would have liked to try.  
In any case, she thought to herself, she felt numb now. Not exactly dispassionate, just unreal. She had been in shock, she knew that. She even knew that she was in shock when she was in shock, which was an exceptionally strange feeling. But the initial shock had passed and left her empty somehow. Empty and with a need for more.  
She had wanted Grissom to be the one to complete her. She used to think work could. But now work just left her feeling more empty, and Grissom, whether he wanted to or not, wouldn't or couldn't make her feel complete. She had to find something on her own. She warned Grissom that someday he might decide what he wanted and it would be too late. She was pretty sure that it was too late now.  
She stared down at the people below her. They all seemed happy but she knew they couldn't be. Everyone had their own problems. She'd just have go down there with the rest of them and try to find a way to solve her own.  
Maybe she wasn't so alone after all. 


	2. Warrick

He stood on top of the roof and looked down at the ground beneath him. It seemed to him that he was here too often, above and away from everyone, and thinking about how life had turned out. It wasn't what he expected. He supposed that was true for everyone. Still, he didn't think he'd be here now.  
Once a gambler and always a gambler, and right now he was wondering about his gambling chances of surviving a fall to the ground below. It wasn't exactly depression as much as a sort of morbid curiousity. In this line of work, you think you've seen it all, and then something hits you with a slam. You think you've seen it all and then a little girl is shot in her room in a drive by. You think you've seen it all and then a little boy is dead when a kidnapping scheme for some cash goes wrong.. The truth is, you've never seen it all.  
Sometimes it didn't feel like that though. He had always had a good grip on people's baser nature, or just human nature in general. Nick was idealistic and Sara was too hot tempered to be objective, but he had always seemed to understand the criminal as much as the victim. That worried him sometimes. It could have been very easy for him in this town to turn out the criminal instead of the criminalist. He still wondered if he could turn out like that.  
After all, most murderers weren't all evil people. A lot of them were even likable people, but you throw in a few hundred factors that just includes everyday living, and normal, nice, happy people can turn into psychopaths. People could never be classified into good or evil. The world was just too grey for that.  
He wondered, though, if people didn't at least lean to one side or the other on the big black versus white spectrum of life. He wondered if he wouldn't tilt a little to the evil side sometimes. He wasn't entirely sure why. He was a good person. He worked hard at his job, chilled on his few days off, and tried to insert a life somewhere between doing forensics and dodging casinos. He certainly wasn't evil. But maybe people could become evil, if they didn't have people to believe in them or they got pushed down all the time. Maybe you get pushed down so many times, you can't ever come back up.  
He had been pushed down a lot in his life. Working that high school case a year or two ago had been weird because it seemed like a whole other life somewhere in the past, and he wasn't that old. But high school is it's own little world, and for him, it had been his own little nightmare. He was a geek, a short geek, pushed around and pulled around until he was basically human putty with big feet. Once again, he could relate to the murderers in cases where the bullied kids murder their bullies. When he was a kid and didn't know that life wasn't like high school out in the real world, he probably could have murdered some of his bullies. That life was all too strange.  
He had been pushed down a lot, but he also had someone to believe in him. Grissom. He didn't really know why. But Grissom watched out for him when he was first getting out of the gambling world he had become immersed in, believed in him when no one else would, certainly not Sara, and certainly not himself. After Holly Gribbs died. . .the world just changed perspectives. No, that was a stupid statement to make; he changed perspective. He wanted to be the good person that his grandmother raised him to be, the person that Grissom believed he could be, the person he should be. He didn't want to disappoint Grissom, not after all of what Grissom did for him. He knew Nick felt a little of that; Nick was constantly worried about what others thought of him, especially Gris. He, himself, didn't used to care at all. . .but now, after Holly, he decided he did care about people's expectations of him. It was, after all, nice for people to have some good ones.  
He didn't know why he was here, on the roof, thinking. He just knew that he had to come up her a lot, to keep that perspective that had changed his life. He hoped he was a good guy. He hoped he could stay that way. He hoped others could see that he tried. Sara changed her mind on him. She used to blame him and think he was a hopeless addict and now she was a friend. . .mostly, anyway. But if Sara could change her mind on something, anything could happen.  
Maybe he really was a good guy after all. 


	3. Doc

He stood on top of the roof and looked down at the ground below him. He didn't get up here very much, what, with being stuck in the morgue most of the time. You get used to being below, of course, and dead bodies weren't usually hard to handle if you're a good coroner, but it was nice to get out in the open sometimes, and above the smell of rotted flesh to a brisk breeze on a cool night. It was nice to be on the roof and alone instead of in a basement with dead people. He didn't mind the company of the dead, of course, it was sort of an occupational hazard, but even when you were mostly immune to death, that constant companionship of those who've passed over could depress you every now and then.  
He liked his work, he did. He was an essential part of the team, but the one not featured often. The CSI's all liked him, he was pretty sure of that, but at the same time, he never went out to lunch with any of them. It didn't particuarly bother him. When watching films, he would identify himself not with the hero, but with the hero's best friend who was necessary for survival but often overlooked. And again, he didn't mind this. He liked all of the CSI's-Nick, Gil, Sara, Catherine, Warrick-but he wasn't excessively close with any of them, which made objectively watching them all the easier. And they were, after all, a fascinating group to study.  
He was probably closest to Grissom. Neither of them were young men anymore, nor did either of them attach closely to others easily. They had a good deal of the same quirks, but even he was more outgoing than Grissom. Grissom kept all of his emotions hidden even from himself; it was fascinating to watch. The situation with the hearing, though, had taken him by surprise. What surprised him the most was that Grissom had failed to do anything about it. He hadn't seen Grissom as the type of man to be driven by fear, and normally, he wouldn't be. Grissom was the type of man driven by curiousity, by science, by a need to know more, but even the most learned man was afraid of something. Grissom feared that by acknowledging the problem once, it would be with him forever: that somehow, if he just pretended it wasn't there, that it never would exist. But it did exist, and he respected Grissom all the more for handling it-the fear only made Grissom seem more human than most people would ever understand.  
He had known Catherine for almost as long as he had known Grissom but he didn't have much of a relationship with her, even though he did like her. He had felt sorry for her too, especially when her ex-husband was lying on his table in the morgue. From the little he had picked up on Eddie Willows, the son of a bitch hadn't been worth shedding two tears over- but tell that to someone who loved him for years and had a child with him. Outside the morgue may have been different, but Catherine was always the CSI who seemed most affected when looking at the dead victims. She took everyone dead too heart, especially children. Every child who died could have been Lindsey, and sometimes he was surprised that Catherine handled herself as well as she did. He wondered briefly how many times Catherine must have seen Lindsey in the morgue in her dreams and was briefly glad he didn't have children. Every victim couldn't be special in a coroner's eyes. You'd go crazy that way.  
According to the rumor mill, it was Sara who had the most empathy for the victims. He had heard about a few clashes above grounds in CSI, a few with Sara and Warrick, a lot between Sara and Grissom. Every now and then he watched Sara as she listened to Grissom and thought he saw something more than professional courtesy. He couldn't tell if Grissom felt the same way and was surprised to notice he didn't really care that much about whatever relationship drama the two CSI's may have had. Love. . . a concern of the living.  
He frowned as he looked down at the ground below, shifting his weight a little as he stood, trying to make it easier on his artificial leg. Love may be a concern of the living and not the dead, but he wasn't dead yet. Surrounded by death but not dead. Then again, maybe he wasn't entirely alive either.  
He glanced below again at the people coming in and out of the building and thought he saw Nick walking outside. Nick was the CSI who got the dates, or at least he had been. Even in the morgue, he had heard of Nick's reputation as a player, though he hadn't heard as much lately. It occured to him as he watched Nick walk to the parking lot that he paid an awful lot of attention to gossip that moved around, especially for an old man. Still, wasn't that too be expected? The giggled whispers of co- workers were healthier to listen to than the silent whispers of the dead. He had known coroners in other cities who had heard them, and where better for the dead to speak than Sin City?  
His thoughts moved back to Nick again. He seemed like such a normal, together guy. He guessed that if he had met Nick in the store, he would never have guessed that this man's business was, in fact, death. That alone made him more curious about Nick than most of his other co-workers, all except Grissom, of course, who was the proverbial conundrum wrapped in a riddle. Nick seemed so stable, so steady, so normal that it made him wonder what darkness he hid within.  
Maybe he read too much into it. After awhile, it was easy to assume that everyone was hiding secrets. Maybe there was nothing.  
Maybe not.  
Warrick was the last CSI on the night shift and ultimately, he didn't have a whole lot of thoughts on him. He liked Warrick, he did. Sometimes, watching him work, Warrick could remind him of Grissom, which was interesting because the two had virtually nothing in common. Still, Warrick and Grissom seemed to have this invisible connection, some bonding between mentor and pupil that wasn't with the others, and it made him wonder what Warrick would be like when he got older.  
What would the all be like when they got older, was the real question. Somedays, he felt older than his fifty odd years. Somedays, he wondered how the hell he had gotten here so quickly. Time moved on and on while you weren't watching, but death was timeless. No matter where, no matter when, there would always be people dying. And that didn't bother him so much, really. After all, death was just another cycle of life. Someday, he would be the dead one lying on the table in the morgue, and maybe David would be the one cutting him up and sending him off to the crematorium like he wanted. He could see himself lying there, on that cold, metal table. . .and it was okay. He didn't shudder from fear. He didn't try to shake the image from his mind. It was okay.  
Because he wasn't there now. That was the important thing. Had he seriously wondered a few minutes ago if he was dead or alive? What a stupid question. Of course he was alive. He had thoughts. He had hobbies. He had friends. Work was important to his life but not his entire life. The people at CSI, his co-workers, were good people to talk to, interesting to study, but not family. He had his own family. He had his own life. The dead were only a part of it. His life was all his own.  
He breathed in the crisp, clear breeze on top of the roof and felt very much alive. 


	4. Greg

He didn't stand on top of the roof but sat on the edge of it, looking below at the world where his legs dangled freely. An airplane flew overhead but he couldn't hear it, the noise of the world being muted by the pounding of Marilyn Manson in his headphones. He let his torso drop backwards and rested his head on the roof of CSI under him. The sky was blue, so very deeply blue that it almost hurt his eyes. He closed them and let the world disappear so that all that was left in existence besides his thoughts was the screaming, pounding music. He let the music carry him away.  
In a few minutes, he would have to go back inside the building and wear his goofy smile again and be happy-go-lucky again, just like always. After all, he was just the geeky lab rat who listened to his music too loud and had too much energy for his own good. That was who he was. If he had real thoughts, real feelings, and went to work without playing around with a piece of evidence or cracking a sex joke with Catherine whenever he could, then what the hell was wrong with him? He's just always happy.  
To be fair, the happiness that he had often exerted at work hadn't always been faked. He liked going to work, or at least he used to. He liked the people he worked with. He liked being the goofball with weird hair. Even still today, he was a pretty geniunely happy person. His life wasn't full of angst and drama and dead girlfriends and screaming parents or anything like that. There were a lot of good things in his life. But this wasn't some stupid movie or T.V. show. He was a real person. And real people have got bad in their lives as well as good, and sometimes he felt that his co-workers didn't really see him as a real person. Sometimes, he wondered if they even saw him at all.  
Mostly, he didn't have problems with his co-workers. He had used to have this big crush on Sara but he knew that was never going to happen in a million years: the closest thing Sara could see him as besides a geeky lab rat would be a pesky little brother. But that was okay because he liked Sara and he enjoyed bantering back and forth with her. He had the same bantering relationship with Catherine and Warrick, and that was fun too. Of all the CSI's, he probably felt closest to Nick, and that could have been because Nick was more personable or younger or whatever. He knew, though, that if he was in some sort of bind or an emergency, and he needed to call someone from work, his first thought would be to Nick. If Sara was his annoying, over-mature older sister, than Nick was definitely the big brother, and that was cool. He valued Nick's friendship more than any other relationship he had at CSI.  
But Grissom. . .  
No one really knew what to do with Gris. Everyone had their own problems with him. Catherine wanted him to be a more open friend. Nick wanted Grissom to trust his judgement as a CSI level 3. There was something going on between Sara and Griss, though God knew what, and Warrick mostly just didn't want to disappoint Grissom. But whatever they thought or the relationship was, he knew that Grissom at least respected all of them as good, hard-working CSI's. And what did Grissom think of him?  
Not a whole hell of a lot, as far as he could tell. He didn't know why it was so important to him to have Grissom like him, but it was. Grissom just seemed to have that affect on people. They liked him, respected him, worked for him, and didn't understand what the hell he was about. He was a mystery, their boss. And for some unexplicable reason or another, it was important that the boss thought well of him.  
So it was of course Grissom that discovered his hands were shaking after the explosion in the lab. Not Nick, who would have understood and watched out for him, and not Sara, who would have probably been to engrossed in work to really care, but Grissom, his boss. Even lying on his back on the roof, Greg shook his head to himself. He still didn't know what Gris had thought. Did he care? Was he only worried about work? Should he be worried?  
He didn't know. Work had used to be fun for him but now it took all his energy to smile like the big goofball everyone knew him as and go back to work. He worried at every test he ran that he would turn around and his lab would blow up. But this time would be worse because this time he wouldn't get let off with severe burn scarring to his back. This time he'd be dead and everyone would get to stand above him in the autopsy room, cutting open his corpse to confirm it was explosion that killed him.  
He shook his head again and turned the music even louder. "But I'm not a slave to a God that doesn't exist," Marilyn Manson pounded through his headphones. "But I'm not a slave to a world that doesn't give a shit."  
  
Did the world give a shit? Usually, he wasn't a big believer in the music he listened to; he just liked the beat, rather than believed the words. But lately, he wondered, did the world give a shit? Did God? Did He even exist?  
He opened his eyes. The sky was so very blue. It reminded him of another Marilyn Manson lyric. "Dear God, the sky is as blue as a gunshot wound. Dear God, if you were alive, yeah, you know we'd kill you."  
Break was almost over. Soon time to go back inside. Back to work.  
He hated work now. He never considered himself to be a brave soul, but work now filled him with such a fear that he loathed himself for being such a chickenshit. He hated that work scared him so much and he hated that he was such an idiot and he hated that Grissom didn't see him as a real person and he hated that God didn't exist. He hated that if he knew God was alive, that society would kill him. He wondered if he could kill God for all the shit he's done, would he?  
He didn't know.  
He sat up again and went back to watching his legs dangle off of the roof freely. He didn't want to go back inside. Inside, he was just another geek whose hands shook as soon as he touched a test tube or a hot plate. He looked down at his hands now. They were steady.  
Outside, he was safe from the explosion. Outside, he was free from having to put on his happy mask.  
If God was alive, he wondered what kind of mask He wore.  
People walked around below him. They had no idea. They didn't see him. They didn't see.  
No one saw.  
Outside he was alone but free. Inside, he was surrounded by other people-yet somehow, he was still alone anyways. Inside, he was trapped. He didn't want to go back again. He was terrified of going back inside the box.  
The people below didn't see his terror. They continued with their daily business. He stared at them from his sitting position on the roof top and wanted to cry.  
He didn't, and went back inside. 


	5. Nick

He stood on top of the roof, looking down at the people below, and thought that bungee jumping sounded pretty good about now.  
He loved flying. He had always gotten a kick out of adrenaline rushes; being a CSI was really just an extension of that. He liked falling and floating and speed. He liked roller coasters, and wished to God that one of these days he'd do something right so that Grissom would take him for once to his favorite relaxation spot.  
He glared at the people below him. He loved flying but he hated the jealousy, and truth be told, he'd been jealous of a lot of people lately. Mostly, he was jealous of Warrick. Warrick, who was Grissom's favorite little CSI. When Warrick screwed up, Grissom just patted him on the head and let him continue. If he had screwed up, Grissom would have kicked him out the door. Silk silk silk. What do cows drink? Milk. He was sure that Warrick would have gotten it wrong too.  
He shook his head at himself. It wasn't fair to Warrick to be this angry at him when he hadn't done anything wrong. It wasn't Warrick's fault that Grissom valued him more than everyone else. Sometimes, he felt that Grissom valued everyone over him, even Ecklie.  
A lot of things had happened to him in the last few years. Kristy had died, Nigel Crane had been stalking him, he got shoved out of a two- story window. He smirked. That had been one time where falling hadn't been as fun. It was too quick to enjoy, even too quick too be frightened. Just hands pushing at him and then falling backwards and a sudden rising world to catch him, although the world's hands had not been gentle. Lately, not a lot had been gentle.  
He was feeling sorry for himself. He turned away from the world in disgust and walked around the roof. He didn't feel like himself lately, the charming, happy optimist that everyone knew him as, that he knew himself as. Sure, his past had been full of painful things, just like anyone's, but he had gotten over them, gotten through them. Even when he was nine, he had gotten through it. Kids are resilient. He once had been too. But now, things just felt like there was collapsing on top of him and there was no escaping them. He had felt like this in Texas once and the feeling had become so overwhelming that he left. He left everyone he loved behind and his childhood home to escape, to run away. Las Vegas had been the perfect escape.  
Until now.  
Now Vegas had turned into the claustrophobic nightmare and he needed to get away. Too much had happened and it seemed like there was no one to rely on. Warrick was a good guy, but he had his own problems and his own life to deal with. Sara was too caught up in her work to be a friend. Catherine would try to be helpful but would just end up sounding patronizing. Greg was nice but he surely wouldn't understand, being so young. Grissom? He would never understand. He had hoped for the longest time if he just worked and worked, he could eventually prove himself to Grissom, but Grissom didn't believe in him and never would. There was no one here for him and he just couldn't bottle it up anymore. Not anymore.  
He turned back to the edge of the roof and before he could push it away, he realized one escape would just be to end it all. Hey, after all, he did like flying right? He could try and learn.  
He laughed harshly and sat down. How sad had he become, contemplating suicide at the place he worked. Maybe he was just a pathetic runaway, a quitter, but he wasn't going to kill himself. He wasn't that much of a coward.  
He didn't think.  
He heard someone call his name from behind him and he turned around. It was Catherine. She probably wanted to work on their robbery case. He waved at her and told her he'd be there in a couple of minutes. She nodded and disappeared.  
He sighed to himself. He couldn't leave Vegas any better than he could leave the world. He couldn't quit now, not after he had worked so hard to achieve absolutely nothing. There had to be a way to get back to being himself again, the happy, optimistic, CSI from Texas who liked to watch TV and football and firmly believed in justice and honor. There had to be a way to get back from this jaded, shadow of himself that he had become, and he didn't think running was the answer. More than likely, he'd just find a new city, settle down somewhat happily for a few years, and then grow to hate it and have to run away again. He couldn't keep running. It just wasn't his style.  
Besides, he had friends here, and whether or not Grissom respected him, he did love his work and the satisfaction it brought him, knowing he had helped putting some creep behind bars so he could never hurt anyone else again. Whether or not that sprung from his own abuser never being put away or just being raised with the ideas of justice and honesty, he didn't know and didn't care. His job felt good to him. It gave him the only meaning he felt he had left in this world.  
And he would miss Sara if he left, her intelligence, frustration, and bantering. He'd miss Warrick's sense of humor and cool. He'd miss Catherine's sassiness and bluntness. He'd miss Greggo's hair, wacky style, and awful music. He'd miss the Doc's little, weird, jokes, his coroner's humor, and he'd miss Brass's brash sort of authority, that very cop essence that he always held. And he'd miss Grissom, as much angst as Grissom seemed to cause him, because he widely respected the strange man. He'd miss Grissom's bugs, his quirks, his near hatred of the Sheriff and the FBI, and the little, one-sided compliments that he'd slip in so subtly that you could barely tell if it was a compliment. He'd miss them all if he left because even if they couldn't help him with whatever it was he was going through, they were still nevertheless his friends, and he didn't want to leave them. He didn't want to leave Vegas. He didn't want to run away.  
Still, he couldn't just live like this. He'd have to find something, anything to keep him from being so miserable. He didn't know what. But something. Because he couldn't just stand being forced up to this ceiling and contemplating suicide once a week. He couldn't accept himself as being that weak.  
He stood up and looked over the edge again. He still wanted to fly. He still wanted to fall.  
He turned and walked away. He wasn't going to fall that way. He wouldn't allow it.  
Maybe he'd go *skydiving again after shift.  
He smiled widely to himself as he walked back inside. 


	6. Brass

He stood on top of the roof and wondered why the hell he was here. He hadn't even come up here really when he had been boss at CSI, and he sure hadn't after he got switched back to homicide. He wasn't much of the introspective type. He didn't like standing up here.  
And yet he was anyway. He didn't know why. Maybe to just take a breather from life. To stand above and look down upon it, removed. He didn't feel removed from life most of the time. He usually felt right smack in the middle. He supposed it was good to get away every now and then. Stand back and think. Try to get a handle on all of it.  
Life hadn't been the easiest lately. He hadn't heard from his daughter, Ellie, in almost two years now. He had no idea where she was or how she was doing, if she had gotten out of all the shit she had been into, or if she was already dead, lying unnoticed in a gutter somewhere in Sin City. Then, just a short time ago, Detective Lockwood, one of their own, had been shot and killed in a bank robbery. He had liked Lockwood. He was a good worker, good man. He felt horrible for the man's poor family. He couldn't imagine getting that call about Ellie.  
No, that wasn't true. He had imagined in several times. He had awoken in the middle of the night to the phone ringing, and with each ring he grew more and more sure that Ellie was dead somewhere, murdered or OD-ed or something, and one of his cops was calling him to tell him that he needed to go to the morgue and ID her. He had seen Ellie dead in his mind far too many times. He never wanted to hear that call.  
But death was all around these days, and he supposed that's just what happened when you choose your career as a cop. Ellie missing, Lockwood dead, the lab blown up, young Greg Sanders almost blown up right along with it. A little more than a year ago, Nick Stokes thrown out of a window, being stalked by some maniac. Three years ago, Holly Gribbs dead, perp returned at the scene. Death was everywhere.  
But hey, this was Sin City, right? Death was just another form of entertainment.  
Yeah, right.  
He couldn't remember if things had always been this way. He had been a cop for too long; he had seen a lot of things and after awhile, the horror just sort of fades away. He didn't feel like he had grown jaded as much as the world had just grown darker. It was a stupid concept. Things had always been shit, especially in this city.  
But that's why he was a cop. He got to put the bad guys in jail. He got to keep death from happening everywhere. He got to help the good guys live. And he didn't always succeed, sure. But most times, he did. And just that was worth fighting for.  
He wondered again what the hell he was doing up here on the roof? Sure, it was nice to take a break now and then. But he didn't need one now; he just wasn't that introspective of a guy. And that was fine. Sure, it might be nice to be as intelligent and deep as Gil, but his life was all right with him. He had bad guys to catch and he was satisfied with that.  
He still wished Ellie would come home, though.  
Life would never be sweet if parts of it didn't taste like shit. 


	7. Catherine

She stood on top of the roof and wondered why she was there. She didn't come up much; she didn't have the time. Work, Lindsay, and sleep. Eat and pee somewhere were in there too. Sex should have been but lately she hadn't been getting much of that. Work, Lindsay, and sleep. That was her life. She didn't have the time to do anything else.  
Not that it was a totally bad life, but Jesus, did it suck sometimes. Just a few short months ago, Eddie had been killed. Murdered, by either his skeezy girlfriend or some punk drug dealer. She was a CSI. It was her job to put people behind bars for murdering others. And when her ex- husband had died, who had she put behind bars? No one. No evidence. No clue. Nothing.  
Lindsay had seemed to take the death of her father okay, as normal as anyone could take something as horrible as that, but sometimes she wasn't sure. The death of a parent could make a child grow up awfully fast. She didn't want her little girl to be grown up just yet. She was still only nine years old. Nine is far too young to be grown up.  
Nick was nine, she thought to herself and shuddered. Who could that do that to a little child?  
She feared for her daughter more than anything else in the world. Everytime she saw a case that hurt a child she instantly thought of Lindsay and was terrified for her. She never wanted her to grow up. She wanted her to be a little girl forever so she could keep her at home and protect her.  
But had she really protected her? When Eddie died, it was Lindsay comforting her, not the other way around, the way it was supposed to be. When the father died, the mother was supposed to help the daughter. She could hit herself for making Lindsay have to say, "It's going to be okay, Mommy." Lindsay wasn't supposed to be the mature one. Only nine!  
She'd like to use the whole Eddie situation as an excuse for being distracted that one day when she left an explosive chemical near the hot plate but she couldn't. She just hadn't checked to see if the hot plate was on. She had no reason to think it was. . .oh, this was pathetic. She had just been stupid. She just wasn't thinking.  
She blew up the lab.  
It might have been funny, being the chick who blew up work on accident, but the thirteen unsolved cases that would never be solved because of her wasn't very funny at all. Neither was Sara with a concussion or Greg Sanders on a stretcher with burns all over his back. Greg, who could have died. All because she wasn't paying attention.  
When she found out that it had been her fault, she went to Greg. She had to tell him, to have him know. She didn't want to. Not that Greg and her would ever tell each other their deepest, darkest secrets, but she did like the little lab rat, and she'd never want harm to come to him, certainly not because of her. The lab just wouldn't be the same without him dancing around to screaming music with a latex glove on his head. It just wouldn't be right.  
She had feared Greg's reaction. Greg didn't have much of a reaction. He had just stared at her, prompting her to ask him, "Greg?"  
Greg had just said, "Okay."  
He didn't seem to blame her. He talked to her later like nothing had ever happened. But she couldn't ask him if he blamed her. He would have told her no. She didn't think he would tell the truth.  
She shook her head. That should have been enough. Eddie dead, Greg hurt because of her. That should have been enough.  
But Sam. . .  
He was like a surrogate father.  
Instead, he was a real father.  
And a murderer.  
It was too much.  
Far, far too much.  
She stepped away from the edge of the roof and looked at the sky above. It was blue skies, not a cloud in sight, the kind of day people always seem to be looking for. She wasn't looking for it. She just wanted some calmness, some clarity. It could rain until the next millenium for all she cared.  
God, what a life. A good life. She loved her daughter more than the whole world; Lindsay was the continuous joy throughout all her days, the blue skies that everyone was looking for. She loved her job and the satisfaction it gave her, the King-Kong-on-Cocaine rush. She enjoyed talking with her friends and co-workers: Nick, and his All American boy charm, Warrick, and his depth under Vegas cool, Sara, and her diligence and passion to everything in life, her absolution to the way the world worked. Grissom, and the way his world worked, where truth always brings inner peace, and where bugs crawled the Earth as kings. Grissom, going deaf because of some bad gene work.  
God, what a life. A good life. But, oh, how it sucked sometimes.  
She wondered what she was doing up here on the roof again. Just yesterday, she had seen Nick up here, looking down at the world, thinking about whatever Nick Stokes thought about it. She wondered how often everyone came up here to get away. It was nice to get away. Necessary. Feel the blue, blue skies and the calmness in the storm.  
She sat down on the roof and closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her face. She could stay up here for awhile and think. No one needed her downstairs. She could just relax and be the calm in the storm.  
People often compared life to a hurricane. Those rare moments of stillness were just that: moments. They would never stay. Life was always tossing you up and down like a rag doll in the air. You had no control. You were a mere twig in the storm.  
Eh. Who needed to be the whole storm, anyway? She was happy where she was. . . calm for a moment, a single twig in Las Vegas. 


	8. Grissom

He didn't stand on the roof but sat in the basement, alone, as he always was. He knew everyone went up to the roof when they needed some time apart. Everyone went up there and looked down at the world below and felt better about their lives. Everyone went up and looked down, but not him. He went down and looked up. Because while all of them might feel alone from time to time, he knew the truth: he was alone. Always alone.  
He wasn't entirely sure when he started to really feel lonely. For him, work, his bugs, and a calamari and a beer were enough for him. He conversed with his co-workers and he geniunely liked them all for different reasons. But things weren't the same for him anymore. The world was not growing cold or dark, merely silent. He was always one to weep at the sounds of silence. The surgery wasn't conclusive. The doctors were hopeful. Hopeful, but never sure. Science was supposed to be about facts, sense and reason, which was why it always appealed so much to him, but he found that in the medical world, nothing was ever sure. There was always hope, but never lasting results. They didn't know if it had worked. He would just have to wait and see. Wait and see. . .  
It seemed to him that he had spent an eternity waiting for something. Someone, maybe? The last woman he had let enter his life romantically had been Terri Miller, but that hadn't worked out. Now he was in a holding pattern and used to it, maybe even comforted by it's familiarity. To go out with a woman on a date would be to break the pattern, break the comfort of some unequivocal truths in his life. He hated the uncertain and the unsure; he spent his life trying to fit puzzle pieces so nothing would ever be incomplete.  
And yet Sara. . . He didn't know where Sara fit in. She was just a colleague. . a friend, to be sure, but nothing more than that. If she felt more than he had meant. . .but he did have some sort of feelings for Sara, feelings that could not be easily categorized or catalogued in the recesses of his mind. There were times when he thought maybe his feelings for Sara did go beyond the professional boundaries. He wasn't sure. The thought of dating her did actually intrigue him, even with the potential unhappiness that could result. He liked Sara, more than just a co-worker, more than just a friend. But when she asked him to dinner. . . No, an automatic no, with no wonder or thought about it. They used to go and get something to eat all the time, just as friends, but things hadn't been the same in the last year. It must have been him who had pulled back because Sara was the one trying to push forward. "It might be too late", she had said, and he had been confused, wondering what she had been talking about.  
Now, he was sitting in the basement of CSI, next to the morgue and the dead bodies, and he understood what she was saying. The ball was in his court, so to speak. If he wanted something to happen, he would have to make the move, and soon, because she wouldn't wait forever. But he hadn't even known she had been waiting. And yet, hadn't he? Hadn't he known all along that there was something between him and Sara that was more than met the eye?  
He tilted his head back and put a hand to his eyes. Even the dim light in the basement was bothering them. He used to get migraines about once a year but lately they had been increasing in number and frequency. He knew not all migraines were related to stress, but he was pretty sure that the ratio between weight on your shoulders and frequency of migraines had a positive correlation. And if it was just Sara, maybe things would be okay, but it wasn't just Sara, and it wasn't just loneliness.  
The deafness, of course, played a significant part. He didn't turn away from deaf people in fear, didn't view them as being different, handicapped, but he was so. . .afraid that he would lose his hearing forever. He had been hiding it all year, of course, but if he did become completely deaf, he couldn't be a CSI anymore, he knew that. He had explained it to the doctor; a significant part of his role as a crime scene investigator was hearing, and if he couldn't hear, then he couldn't do it, and that was that. It was all over for him. And if he wasn't a CSI, then what was he? Who was he? His job had become too big a part of his life, too large a part of his essence to be just chucked away. He wouldn't survive, not being who he was. He would just slowly wither away and die.  
And death. . .he was afraid of it. He didn't want to die yet. There were too many puzzles to be completed, too many crimes to be solved. Too much life to die just yet. And if that's how he felt, he wondered how Greg must have felt. He knew, just by talking to him, that Greg was sure he was going to die. How would he have felt, being in that position? It wasn't a wonder that Greg's hands were trembling. But he hadn't seen a decrease in the workload he could handle and there hadn't been any mistakes that had been made because of his trembling hands. Greg seemed to be okay, coping. Still, he wasn't sure, and that bothered him. He liked unequivical truths, and if it was one thing he knew he could count on was Greg listening to his horrible music in the lab, dancing around, making bad jokes, and learning. He saw Greg as a very young, very intelligent man who could be capable of achieving very great things in life. He was just waiting for the day Greg turned from lab worker to CSI; he knew Greg had the capability to be an excellent one. But he worried about the young lab tech. Maybe he really hadn't come to terms with what had happened yet, in the explosion. Maybe something inside him was broken. Maybe Greg wasn't the only one who was broken. Maybe they all were. Maybe that's why they had chosen to live this life, go into this career. After all, Catherine had her past, exotic dancing and a dead husband behind her, and Warrick had his gambling and Holly Gribbs on his head. Brass had Ellie. He wasn't sure what haunted Nick, Sara, or the Doc, but something must have. Something haunts everyone's dreams. That was natural. He didn't mind that. He also knew that's why everyone went up to the roof. It made him smile, if only bitterly. They all went up to the roof to think, to clear their heads, each of them thinking they were the only ones who had to do so. But he didn't go up to the roof. Because as upset and broken as they may have felt, he knew they weren't really broken, just a little bent. They'd move on. They'd live. They went up to the roof and breathed in that air and things were just a little bit better. In the end, everyone thought they were alone but none of them really were. They all went to the roof, but not him. He went to the basement. Because he knew one thing, one thing that none of his co- workers knew. He was alone.  
That's how the stories end these days. Most people live these hectic lives and start to despair, and in a moment of calm, they think of all the good things and move on. They survive. They aren't alone. They are the good guys. Things will get better someday and they will get their happy ending. They are very much alive. Their thoughts are from above. But every now and then you get one person or another who wasn't like that. He used to go up to the roof to think but clarity and optimism didn't reach him even in the heightened elevation. Slowly and slowly, he faded more and more from view, until he was less living than dead. And only the living belong on the roof. The dead are held in the morgue and the nearly dead in the room next door. That's where he belonged. He wasn't meant to have a happy ending. Because "some were born to sweet delight" and "some were born to endless night", as a good poet, William Blake, once put it. More than any other reason, that's why he worked grave shift. Not better pay or he just liked the hours-but the truth. He was born to endless night. He was made to be alone. But it still hurt sometimes. He thought about crying and didn't. On rare occasion, he would allow himself tears, though he knew none of his co-workers could believe it. But this day he didn't cry. There was no point in tears for who you were and what you couldn't change. He was Gil Grissom, slowly going deaf, slowly dying. He was very, very much alone and nothing would ever change that. His thoughts came from below. Fin 


End file.
